


Under Big Moons and Tiny Stars

by May



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/pseuds/May
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Far, far away from where the big trolls are, Gamzee lives out a night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Big Moons and Tiny Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of two fics I wrote for the prompt 'two gorgeous views'. Reference to an assault/attempted drowning and Gamzee eats a weird bug and doesn't even care.

It's the middle of the night and a little purple-blooded wiggler sits, legs sprawled, on the beach he lives beside. He can feel rough sand slide over his fingers through the gaps between them. He flexes his fingerjoints, the grains scratching against the sensitive insides of his knuckles. He rubs his fingers together, letting the small, sharp fragments repeatedly catch his skin. Some of them have got caught under his claws and he stops to pick them out. The feel of a claw from one hand rooted into the claw on another hand feels odd, like he's getting straight underneath his own flesh through his outside skin. He does that until it's all gone and lays his head down on the sand and stares out over the sea. He feels a little heavy like that, as if he can sink down into the ground. It's a nice thought, although he's not quite sure whether the feeling that the sand made against his fingers would be good strange or bad strange against the skin everywhere else.

He forgets about that and turns his attention to where the sea turns into the sky, the velvety discs of the moons skimming pink and green across the water. The stars wink, small and infinite. He doesn't know much about stars but he does know that all the big trolls are out there on them. Even though stars are tiny and trolls are bigger, they're out there. He doesn't want to think about that too much because it kind of makes his think pan want to turn inside out.

Something skittles under his nose and he pulls himself up. Sand sticks to his skin and he's not sure how that happens, either. Sand is dry unless it's from straight under the waves that curl in and out a little while away, and his skin is dry, too. It comes off, though, if he sits in the water. It used to be the seawater, and he would sit and feel the waves roll over him and dislodge the tiny grains from the surface of his skin. It would also remove the layers of grime that seem to build up when he's been sitting on the beach and sleeping in his pod. He smelt briny, after that, and the salt stuck in his hair and made it itchy around the base of his horns. He never minded since he could scratch at it so it went away for a time.

He stopped going in the ocean after, one night, sudden cold hands wrapped around his ankles and pulled him back under the waves. A moment too late to register what was going on had meant that he was surrounded, in the water, by cold, clammy bodies before he knew it. His lungs burned as they filled with water, his eyes stinging from the salt. There were no grown up trolls on Alternia, but they were big enough to him that it didn't matter. After the frightening blur of hands and claws and dark, briny water that wanted to seep everywhere inside him, he had reached a point and then burst. Through a cloud of violet, he had scrambled his way back to shore.

Now, his ears twitch for movements in the water and he knows his clubs are on hand. A tiny scuttling thing runs past, again, it's antennea flaring and pointing. He catches it and picks it up, watching it wriggle a second before cracking it open. Its insides are a surprising cerulean and he wrenches it completely in two and puts one half aside. With his teeth, he drags the meat from the broken half-an-exo-skeleton in his hand and scans the water for a flick of a tail and a pair of long horns like his.

The half a carcass that he's set aside isn't very much but he'll feed it to him by hand. The little troll crunches the last of his share of the meal, and the twitchy little legs always feel weird against his tongue. After that, he scrawls faces in the sand while he waits, and, when he makes the eyeholes a little too big, the sand starts slipping inwards on itself.

Something moves distantly, then, and he grabs the half-bug he's set aside and holds it patiently. And then, distracted by the reflections of the moons against the water, again, he waits there until just before the sun comes up.


End file.
